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Shirley Zhao

High property prices, long working hours and serious air pollution are the major factors threatening Hong Kong's rank as Asia's second-most sustainable city, after Seoul, according to a new ranking of the world's 50 leading cities.
Hong Kong ranks eighth overall on the Sustainable Cities Index, compiled by the global design, engineering and management consulting firm Arcadis, which is based in Amsterdam.
Frankfurt, London and Copenhagen are the world's top three cities on the index.
Among the 14 Asian cities, Hong Kong comes behind Seoul but ahead of Singapore.
The index, released today, is further divided into three subindexes: "people" measures a city's quality of life; "planet" covers environmental factors; and "profit" assesses the city's business environment and economic performance.
Hong Kong ranked sixth in people, 19th in planet and third for profit.
"The index gives us really useful pointers on how we can improve and what we can do better," said Graham Kean, Asia-Pacific head of client solutions at Arcadis.
Kean, who is based in Hong Kong, said skyrocketing property prices were "probably the biggest thing holding us back" in the people sub-ranking, as family-sized homes were more affordable in Europe and the United States.
The city also performed worse in income equality and work-life balance. Kean said a lack of work-life balance was a phenomenon across Asian cities, where people tend to work 20 per cent longer hours on average than the other cities in the survey.
He added that a lack of space at home and short commuting time - the shortest in the world - also caused people to stay at their workplaces longer.
In the planet sub-ranking, Hong Kong performed especially poorly with regards to its energy use. A low proportion of renewable energy sources, greater vulnerability to natural catastrophes, more air pollution, higher greenhouse gas emissions and poor solid waste management contributed to its low ranking.
"The greenhouse emissions here seem surprisingly high for a city that's got such a great public transport system," Kean said.
He said that buildings could be a big source of such emissions and Hong Kong needed to give landlords an incentive to upgrade the many ageing buildings in town to make them more energy-efficient.
With the city's landfills on the verge of overflowing, the government needed better waste management as well, Kean added.
But Kean said Hong Kong remained one of the world's major financial hubs for its transparency, good regulations and connections with many big corporations based here.
He said the index reflected the importance of creating a more liveable environment for a city's sustainability.
"You create a place where people want to live and educate their children, and they will want to stay and produce values to the society," he said.
The index's scoring is based on authoritative international sources such as the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, QS World University rankings, International Labour Organisation, UBS financial services and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
 


	Top 10 sustainable cities 2015


		Frankfurt

		London

		Copenhagen

		Amsterdam

		Rotterdam

		Berlin

		Seoul

		Hong Kong

		Madrid

		Singapore

Source: Arcadis


Hong Kong takes second in Asia on list of sustainable cities

News

Hong Kong

Property prices and pollution holding city back, but it scores well for business and liveability


High property prices, long working hours and serious air pollution are the major factors threatening Hong Kong's rank as Asia's second-most sustainable city.


Hong Kong takes second in Asia on list of sustainable cities

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Property prices and pollution holding city back, but it scores well for business and liveability

Property prices and pollution holding city back, but it scores well for business and liveability